CHICAGO — When Tyler Seguin was in Switzerland for EHC Biel during the lockout, he tweeted a screenshot of his phone, showing a text message from a girl named “Don’t Text Her Bro” in his phone. Now, it’s only of his lockout teammates he isn’t texting.

Seguin played with Blackhawks star wing and 2007 first overall pick Patrick Kane for EHC Biel in Switzerland, and in addition to both having success (both players had more than a point per game, with Seguin racking up 40 points in 29 contests), the two became friends. They lived in the same building, where Kane’s mom — who was staying with the occasional troublemaker — was rumored to do Seguin’s laundry. For the record, Kane denied that. He did have high praise for his former Biel teammate, though.

“Just watching him in Switzerland, at first I thought for sure this kid’s one day going to lead the NHL in goals or maybe in scoring because of the skill he has and his shot, his speed and his smarts for the game, too,” Kane said. “I think you’ll see some special things from him in the future.”

Yet right now, anything that’s said will be about one another, and not to one another. With the Stanley Cup on the line, the two youngsters — who were teammates in a different league months ago — are now opponents on the biggest stage.

After the Bruins and Blackhawks clinched their berths in the Stanley Cup finals, Seguin got text a couple mass texts from Biel teammates. He saw that they were sent to Kane, too.

The Penguins are going to give their biggest push Friday, and after outplaying the Bruins in Game 3, that should make the fourth win — as it usually is anyway — the toughest one to get.

Yet also facing the Bruins is the fact that they’ll be sporting a revamped bottom six. Regardless of whether the bottom six that Claude Julien put out in morning skate (Daugavins – Peverley – Seguin, Paille – Kelly – Thornton) sticks, the Bruins will be dealing with two different lines than usual.

That could be an advantage for the Penguins, as they are already a deeper team offensively than the Bruins (though this series wouldn’t tell you that), so their bottom two lines could take advantage of those of the Bruins as they try to get their footing.

“I don’t think it’s unfamiliar roles,” Chris Kellysaid after Friday’s morning skate. “I think everyone’s played with one another in certain aspects not only this year, but in years past. It’s just one of those things that you plug in guys and they go out there and do a job. There’s chemistry between all six of us that play, so I don’t see it being a problem.”

The Penguins still have just two goals in the Eastern Conference finals — one from Chris Kunitz and one from Brandon Sutter. THat means that Pittsburgh has gotten one goal out of its top two lines and one from it’s bottom two.

So for as much attention is being paid to the Bruins shutting down Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and friends, consider that the B’s — while not getting much secondary scoring themselves — have also kept the Penguins’ bottom two lines quiet.

“I think everyone wants to play their role and get their required job done,” Tyler Seguin, who has gone from a top-six guy to the bottom-six in this postseason, said. “I think it’s good D zone first with us, and it always has been. Whether it’s shutting down secondary scoring or whatnot, that’s what comes first. We’d obviously like to pop in a couple for ourselves if we can.”

Assuming the lines seen in morning skate are used Friday night, it will be interesting to see which one is used as a third line and which one is used as a fourth line. Kelly has no points the last 19 games, but his presence on the Merlot Line might mean more minutes than usual for what was once the Merlot Line.

No, it wasn’t because he was sad that his numbers haven’t been there this postseason (one goal and three assists for four points), but because of his allergies. In fact, Seguin’s been upbeat despite his lack of offense. His coach and teammates gave him a vote of confidence Sunday, and he thinks he’s doing the right things to work his way out of his slump. Most importantly, as he plays on the third line following a demotion from the second line earlier in the playoffs, he’s trying to be as good as he can be on that line rather than making it about him.

“I’m playing my role on this team,” Seguin said. “I’m here to win games, not to want to score every single shift. Obviously it gets frustrating at times, but we’re winning games. It definitely makes you happy and it’s a fun time right now.”

Seguin’s played his way out of slumps like this before. After returning from Switzerland when the lockout ended, Seguin, who scored 29 goals last season, scored just once in Boston’s first eight games of the season. He got through it by focusing on the rest of his game and following Claude Julien‘s logic that when you concentrate on all aspects of the game, the offense will come.

“It’s just really doing more simple things, I guess, whether it’s making sure you don’t lose any battles out there or just being good in your own zone,” Seguin said. “That’s what I’m focusing on right now since the goals aren’t coming.”

The issues with Seguin’s game at this point don’t seem to be anything necessarily new. He can be a bit hesitant if there’s a possibility of contact, but he was the same way when he was lighting it up last year. He’s throwing a lot of pucks on net, which is good, although he had none in the Bruins’ Game 1 win over the Penguins.

It’s good that Seguin’s keeping positive, because as was evident withMilan Lucic during the regular season, a player can be in big trouble once they lose their confidence. Now the B’s just need Seguin to start producing, and quickly. The Penguins are going to score, and Seguin’s one of the Bruins’ best potential weapons in matching their production.

Bruins forward Shawn Thornton joined Dennis & Callahan on Monday morning to talk about his team’s Eastern Conference finals series against the Penguins.

With usual suspect Matt Cooke not being suspended for his Saturday night hit against Adam McQuaid, there is an expectation that the Bruins will try to retaliate against Cooke. However, Thornton downplayed that possibility.

‘It’s tough this time of year to retaliate,’ Thornton said. ‘You don’t want to be the reason that you lose a game in the playoffs. Everything is just worth so much more this time of year, especially how far along we are in the playoffs. It gets more important to keep your composure.

‘This hit was a little bit different [than the one on Marc Savard], obviously, and if need be I’m pretty sure Adam McQuaid can take care of himself. He is a pretty big, tough guy.’

Mark Madden, a sports talk radio host at 105.9 The X in Pittsburgh, said the Bruins did not immediately retaliate when Cooke checked Savard in the head on March 7, 2010, is because Savard was disliked in the Bruins locker room. Thornton denied that claim.

‘Matt Cooke got kicked out of that game with Savvy years ago [actually, Cooke was not penalized at all]. The people that were on the ice with Savvy — a couple of them didn’t see what happened and I think a couple of them couldn’t get there in time. It was like Michael Ryder, who I don’t think ever had a fight in the NHL. Then there was three minutes left in the game, if I’m not mistaken [actually 5:37], so you can’t go out there and jump anyone either because it’s a $10,000 fine for you and a $10,000 fine for the coach and a $20,000 fine for the team — I don’t know what the exact numbers are but there are a lot of rules in place that stop you from gooning it up at the end of the games. They’re just trying to clean up the game.

“So, it wasn’t because Savvy was disliked. It was just at what time it went and who with that incident.’

One player who did fight Saturday night was Patrice Bergeron, who dropped the gloves with Evgeni Malkin after the second period. Bergeron lost the fight and got a bloody face, but Thornton said he did not have much of a chance to win it once Malkin pulled his jersey over his head.

‘His jersey came over his head really quickly and there is nothing you can do when that happens,’ Thornton said. ‘You can’t see anything, kind of the old-school way, I guess. He did a good job getting in there. He didn’t back down. I know Malkin is not known as a tough guy, but he still is about five inches taller than him. Any time anyone gets in there, it’s not an easy job to do, so I definitely congratulated him.’

PITTSBURGH — Tyler Seguin still isn’t scoring, and that might catch up with the Bruins. They’re not panicking yet, however, as they have a one-game lead in the Eastern Conference finals to more exceptional work from David Krejci‘s line.

Seguin had zero shots on goal in 13:50 of ice time in Game 1 against the Penguins and had a bad giveaway in the offensive zone that led to a scoring chance for the Penguins the other way, but both Claude Julien and Seguin’s teammates say they’ve seen positive strides from the 21-year-old winger in recent games. Seguin scored his only goal of the playoffs in Game 4 against the Rangers and picked up an assist in Game 5. He played the entire Rangers series as a member of the third line with Chris Kelly and Rich Peverley.

“Maybe he hasn’t produced it at the level that he’d like to and maybe we’d like to, but I thought he played a real good game yesterday,” Julien said of Seguin Sunday. “I thought not only with the puck, without the puck he was good. [He] threw some checks, puck pursuit was good, and that line to me was much better line than we’ve seen him in the first two rounds.

“I thought they had some chances and I was encouraged by the way they played yesterday, and then as far as Tyler’s concerned, seems to be extremely focused and wants to be a better player and has a coach that’s all you need to see and at one point he’s going to bust out and give us the production that we’re looking for.”

So far this season, Seguin has just four points (one goal, three assists), with the lack of scoring a big issue considering he was second to Brad Marchand in the regular season with 16 goals. Marchand sees a player that’s as determined as Seguin was when he struggled to find offense after coming back from Europe following the lockout.

“I think he’s playing well right now. He’s battling very hard,” Marchand said. “That’s what you have to do if things aren’t going right, but the last couple games, the last series, he played much better. He’s battling harder, he’s getting opportunities and he got a goal and [an assist] there, so he’s turned his game around and he’s playing well right now.”

If Seguin doesn’t get going offensively and the Bruins don’t get the opportunity to use the Merlot Line much (as was the case in Game 1), one option could be to move Daniel Paille to the left wing of Kelly’s line, move Peverley to right wing and then use Seguin to take some of Jaromir Jagr’s shifts on the second line, much like Peverley did with Mark Recchi from Game 7 of the conference finals until Nathan Horton’s concussion in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals.

Boston’s fourth line of Daniel Paille, Gregory Campbell and Shawn Thornton came up big for the Bruins against the Rangers, playing key roles in Games 3 and 5. McGuire said Pittsburgh’s depth will negate that advantage.

“There was no answer from the Rangers for Boston’s fourth line. ‘¦ Pittsburgh, I can tell you, has an answer for the Bruins’ fourth line,” McGuire said. ” Paille, Campbell and Thornton aren’t going to run around and dominate the way they did the Rangers. Because guys like Jussi Jokinen, guys like Joe Vitale, who played at Northeastern University, a kid out of St. Louis, guys like Craig Adams, who played at Harvard. You’re going to see, these guys can make a mess and they can put you through the boards as much as Thornton can, as much as Paille can, they can fight as much as Campbell can. That’s going to be the X factor that really helped the Bruins last series, it won’t be as much of an impact this series.”

Andrew Ference, who missed the entire Rangers series with what the Bruins called a lower-body injury, skated with his teammates at Tuesday’s practice. That’s let to discussion about which young defenseman the B’s might sit if the team wants to make room for the veteran. McGuire suggested the B’s might want to give Ference more time to recover fully.

“He’s walking around with a walking boot on, so clearly there’s a problem with the lower part of his foot or ankle,” McGuire said. “It’s not easy to come back from something like that at this time of the year. So, I don’t think they’re in a rush. And Andrew would probably be the first person to tell you: You know what, when a team’s playing as well as Boston’s playing, especially those players, you probably don’t take them out of the lineup.”

Another topic of discussion around the Bruins is whether the team should move Tyler Seguin back up to the second line in place of Jaromir Jagr.

“We saw what Jaromir could do in confined areas against the Rangers, and there were points in that series where he really wanted to take the puck over but he was overextending his shifts and you could see he was breaking down a little bit,” McGuire said. “Tyler, you could see, and I talked to Tyler a couple of times during the series, he was fighting it in terms of getting pucks in, but he was still making plays. I know he turned the puck over a couple of times. That’s going to happen with offensive players, you’re going to turn the puck over because they’re trying to make stuff happen with the puck. It’s the checkers that you can’t afford having them turn it over. Because they don’t do much with it. They chip it in and chip it out, and they usually don’t score a lot.

“Tyler will probably get augmented minutes. I’ve got to believe the coaching staff is seeing what we’re seeing, and that is that here’s a kid that’s got a chance to be a difference-maker, and his speed is going to be huge.”

Hours after the Bruins’ 5-2 victory over the Rangers last Sunday, the TD Garden sat still and empty.

The boisterous crowd had long since departed after Boston took care of business, holding serve on home ice, supplying the team with a 2-0 series lead in its Stanley Cup playoff conference semifinal series. The players and coaches trickled steadily out of the building, the janitorial crew had finished cleaning. Hours after the final whistle, Jaromir Jagr returned, alone, to the ice.

‘Hockey is who he is,’ said Mark Recchi, Jagr’s former Penguins teammate. Last seen in a Bruins sweater hoisting the Stanley Cup, Recchi now is a hockey operations advisor with the Stars, the team that dealt Jagr to the Bruins. ‘That’s his life. He’s passionate about it, he works hard at it, and he still wants to be a great player. He does whatever it takes to stay at that level.’

In front of 17,565 empty golden seats, the 41-year-old Jagr skated. Using every inch of his 6-foot-3, 240 pound frame, the forward from Kladno pushed himself, feeling the burn in his thickly muscled thighs. Living over 3,900 miles from his family in the Czech Republic, Jagr needed to be back on the ice, back home. The man with such phenomenal balance on skates then skated some more.

‘This is playoffs,’ reminded Jagr. ‘Any player will find out. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the first, second line or third. It’s tight checking. It’s harder to score.’

Jagr began his NHL career with the Penguins but now is looking to end Pittsburgh’s season. His playoff resume includes 78 playoff goals, though none have come recently. Amidst the longest scoring drought of his career, Jagr has not scored in 21 consecutive playoff games (his last playoff goal came against the Penguins in 2012). Though he has accumulated 193 playoff points over the course of his career, Jagr has registered just four points in 12 games during the Bruins’ 2013 postseason run.

‘It’s harder to score for me, and it’s harder to score for anybody else,” he said. “Unless you the best player in the world.’

Jagr would know better than most, considering, once upon a time, he was the best in the world.

Just like Jagr can’t fathom the idea of leaving the rink after a game (he is on record stating his desire for the NHL to begin playing doubleheaders), the concept of life without hockey is far removed from his mind. The offensive dervish entered the National Hockey League at the age of 18. Since then, every imaginable part of his life — and the world — has changed. His identity as a hockey player has evolved over the past 23 years, but his profession remains unchanged. Jaromir Jagr, all these years later, is still a hockey player.

‘I don’t think he’ll ever change,’ said Craig Patrick, general manager of the Penguins from 1989-2006. ‘He was built this way.’